Sunday Service 10:30 a.m.
Child care is available starting at 10:00 a.m.
Join us for some radical hospitality after the service!

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Normally submissions for inclusion in The View are due on noon Wednesday. On Thanksgiving week submissions will be due Tuesday, November 24. The View will be published on Wednesday afternoon, November 25.

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As they say all who wander are not lost. Today we will talk about journey as a spiritual discipline.

Reverend James Ford

Next Week's Sermon

Tales of Thanksgiving

In recent decades our American Thanksgiving has taken a bit of a beating. Native Americans quite rightly see ironies and abuses reflected in that Pilgrim story. However, a celebration of thanksgiving, of harvest, is as old as humankind. And today James will acknowledge our particular difficulties, and also dig into that deeper reality.

To contact people named in The View please see the PUC Directory which is available in the Members Section of the PUC website. If you need the password for the Members Section, or if you do not have access to a computer, contact the PUC Office for help accessing it. The phone number and office hours are listed each week at the very bottom of The View.

Joys
&
Concerns

On Tuesday Craig Block was admitted to City of Hope for his long-awaited stem cell transplant. Back in spring, he had donated his own stem cells, so he's good to go. He's expected to require a three-to six-week stay for the process.

Cards would be appreciated, addressed to him @ City of Hope, 1500 E. Duarte Road, Duarte, CA 91010 - 3000.

§Come join friends in the PUC Library on Sunday morning from 9:30 to 10:30 and join the Joys and Sorrows Circle. The Circle gives a compassionate space for sharing and listening. Organized by Sandy McNeil.

Pacific Sage Preschool and its Council invite you to be our guest for lunch after services. PSP expresses thanks and gratitude for the generosity of time and talent of so many people in the PUC Community.

~

Please join us for a Town Hall Meeting:Making PUC Work For You -
PUC's Organizational Structure and Governance Part II
Grab lunch and join us in the hall for an engaging dialogue on PUC’s governance and provide your input & feedback as we look to make improvements over the next five months.

Blogger Will Shetterly once pointed readers to a quote from “Two logical fallacies that we must avoid” by Satoshi Kanazawa, reprinted from his Psychology Today blog the “Scientific Fundamentalist.” I’ve never forgotten it.

The naturalistic fallacy, which was coined by the English philosopher George Edward Moore in the early 20th century though first identified much earlier by the Scottish philosopher David Hume, is the leap from is to ought – that is, the tendency to believe that what is natural is good; that what is, ought to be. For example, one might commit the error of the naturalist fallacy and say, “Because people are genetically different and endowed with different innate abilities and talents, they ought to be treated differently.”

The moralistic fallacy, coined by the Harvard microbiologist Bernard Davis in the 1970s, is the opposite of the naturalistic fallacy. It refers to the leap from ought to is, the claim that the way things should be is the way they are. This is the tendency to believe that what is good is natural; that what ought to be, is. For example, one might commit the error of the moralistic fallacy and say, “Because everybody ought to be treated equally, there are no innate genetic differences between people.” The science writer extraordinaire Matt Ridley calls it the reverse naturalistic fallacy.

Now these fallacies should be a concern for both spiritual liberals and conservatives, but my focus is at the liberal end of the spiritual spectrum. I believe at our best we aspire to live in the world that is and to work for a world that can be. I call this “naturalistic spirituality.”

I believe Kanazawa eloquently summarizes the primary dangers facing any naturalistic spirituality, the two horns, as it were, by which, if we’re not careful, we’ll get gored. And therefore two fallacies about which religious liberals need to be particularly careful. The one error is thinking the way things are, are the way things are supposed to be. The other, of course, is confusing our ideals for what actually is.

Starting with that first point. The late Patrick Moynihan famously observed how “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.” Admittedly facts are slippery things. But, as we engage the world with both rigor and humility, I’m confident we can get a good enough sense of that “what is.”

With that what is, antinomianism, the inclination to say with “true knowledge” everything goes, is perhaps the danger for spiritual liberals. But, I’m inclined to think our greater danger is in fact that second fallacy. When we assert any vision of a better world is the only way things should turn out, we tumble headlong down some steep stairs.

It is being possessed by the demon of certainty. And the spiritual liberal can fall for that demon as easily as the spiritual conservative. We need to be very careful about confusing what we hope for with what “is.” Bad premise, bad outcome. Almost always

My take away here is that once again we’re called to genuine humility, to a profound not-knowing. Here be magic. Here we find ourselves invited into a world of many possibilities.

This on-going support group offering fellowship and friendship for the benefit our seniors. In the hour long meeting we develop close and helpful bonds. Come, participate, and get to know other seniors.

Join us for an evening of Board Games, fun talk, new and known friends and brain exercise. Bring a snack or a drink to share and your favorite games. We'll have a table of games in Spanish for those who are interested on practicing it. All ages, political and religious denominations are welcomed. Hope to see you there!

The gift of a cake is a “gesture…of fellowship
that adds to your stature and enriches your life.”

~ Joy of Cooking

Harbor Interfaith Services is in need of 350 cake mixes and pre-made frosting for Thanksgiving food baskets to distribute to families in need. What’s a truly satisfying Thanksgiving dinner without a delicious dessert to top it off? Pie may be the Thanksgiving tradition, but it’s really hard to store and distribute, so this year, HIS families will receive cake fixin’s in their holiday food baskets.

Let’s challenge ourselves to collect all 350 for the families of HIS! We have this Sunday to meet this challenge -- November 15. If each member brings two to four boxes of cake mix and cans of frosting we can meet this goal.

PUC's Season of Service is heading into the heart of the holiday season. With these social justice actions we hope to highlight the holidays as a time for serving, rather than consuming. Join us in any way you can!

PUC's Season of Service is heading into the heart of the holiday season. With these social justice actions we hope to highlight the holidays as a time for serving, rather than consuming. Join us in any way you can!

PUC Takes the Cake!

We’ve collected peanut butter, blankets and now CAKE! HIS has requested that we provide cake mixes and pre-made frosting to stock 350 Thanksgiving food baskets. Apparently storing 350 pies for distribution with Thanksgiving food baskets is quite a challenge, so this year, Harbor Interfaith clients will be topping off their Thanksgiving meals with cake. We only have two more Sundays to collect as many of needed cake fix in’s as possible.

Service in Action

PUC volunteers will head to Harbor Interfaith in San Pedro to help assemble Thanksgiving food baskets on Monday, November 23and distribute those baskets on Tuesday, November 24. This is a great opportunity for PUC to provide hands-on service to those in need and a family-friendly activity for kids who may have the week off of school! Plan on joining us if you can!

Keep the Service Coming

The Social Justice Committee will meet Wednesday, November 4 from 6:30 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. to work out further details for our upcoming holiday efforts and to consider additional social justice actions for the 2016 calendar. Join us and share your great ideas for extending our social justice momentum into the coming year.

Our colorful Guest at Your Table boxes are on their way. The boxes and Stories of Hope are key components to our annual fund raiser. The boxes are kept at your dinner table or other gathering space throughout the program. While the box is there to to collect your loose change and bills, it also serves as an important physical reminder of the work UUSC and our partners are doing to defend human rights around the world.

Stories of Hope is a booklet where you will find inspiring stories about UUSC's partners and their amazing work. Keep a copy near your box. Each time you gather near the box (for dinner, as an example) you might read through one of the stories, discuss it, and consider the profound ways a Guest at Your Table gift will help advance human rights.

This Sunday, November 15, RE youth will be meeting together with me to learn about the UUSC service project, “Guest at your Table”. We will make the collection boxes which will be distributed the following Sunday. Then we will work on our craft projects which we will be selling to earn money for our own PUC RE service projects, including gift baskets for our members who have health and mobility issues which make it hard for them to attend services on Sundays, but who are still an important part of our PUC community. Crafts class will continue in Room 1 after Youth Choir, around 12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m. This project is designed to give all our youth the opportunity to make a positive contribution to our PUC community. The ability to contribute, to give, is empowering.

The Tree Trimming Potluck, which is hosted by the RE Committee (a hard­working, skilled, and steadfast group of amazing volunteers) will be on December 5. This is a Saturday evening. Please note that for some reason of cognitive disfunction, I gave the date in the last View as the 4 December. If you marked a Friday night on your calendar, please change it to Saturday, the 5th. OUR ENTIRE COMMUNITY IS INVITED TO COME SHARE THE FUN WITH US! Bring a dish to share and come help us decorate the tree, decorate cookies, and have fun! We will have our tree ready to add to the festive mood when we do our annual “Festival of the Lights” service on December 6. It promises to be a fun and inspirational weekend!

Reflecting on Pilgrims to get ready for this week's “Story for all Ages”, I have been reading amazing stories of so many people who have come to this country specifically to be able to practice their religion. My mother's people were Crandalls. The first one to set foot in this country was a Seventh Day Baptist who was shunned by his family because he would not attend the King’s Church in England. He was a minister who started a church with others in Rhode Island. We have many ministers in the family tree that descends and eventually becomes American Baptist, the last that I am aware of being my great ­uncle Paul. That struggle of coming to a new land in order to live according to one's own conscience is buried deep in my family's history. Although I am sure it informs us in some ways, I have experienced in my life great freedom of choice concerning my religious identity. I am awed by people who come to this country regularly still, to find freedoms that I have taken too much for granted. If you have a family story which involves pilgrimage to this country, share it with your children on the way to church Sunday.

NovemberOur post-service craft sessions continue through mid November. This activity is staffed by your DRE and Child Care Providers and will meet from noon until 1:00 p.m. Children must be signed in. Parents and others welcomed to participate.

November 1: Multi­generational Service for Day of the DeadNovember 8: RE ClassesNovember 15: Class with Vicki Gavel, DRENovember 22: RE ClassesNovember 29: Assembling gift baskets for PUC members who are unable to attend church.

Now begins a magical and wonderful time of the year full of family, friends…and feasting! It is also a time of thankfulness and gratitude for the amazing things that have happened to us. Good? We celebrate. Bad? We still celebrate surviving the experience.

Pacific Sage Preschool exists through the generosity of time and talent of so many people in the PUC Community, so with thankfulness and gratitude Pacific Sage Preschool and its Council invite you to be our guest for lunch after services on Sunday, November 15, and then attend the Town Hall Meeting!

We will also take a few minutes to mention, honor and thank our remarkable volunteers at the start of the service.

With warm appreciation,SylviaDirectorPacific Sage Preschool

Story & ArtTHIS Saturday, November 1410:00 a.m. to 11:30 a.m.Pacific Sage Preschool on the PUC Campus

Bring a child (or the child you keep hidden inside) and join us!
Open to members of our PUC community, friends, neighbors
and of course our Pacific Sage Preschool families.

A class designed for all levels, shapes, and ages. We will focus on a gentle practice through movement to help unblock your flow of energy and increase your mental and physical flexibility while releasing stress and enhancing body awareness. Poses and exercises build strength, relieve pain and stress, and improve balance. Questions: Debi@omhappy.com.

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Pacific Southwest District UUAThe Pacific Southwest District of the Unitarian
Universalist Association consists of 50 Congregations in Arizona, Southern California and Southern Nevada. The PSWD is also part of the Pacific Western Region of the UUA.http://www.pswduua.org

Camp de Benneville Pines
Affiliated with the Pacific Southwest District of the Unitarian-Universalist Association and welcoming people of all faiths for programming compatible with the UU philosophy of respect for the interconnected web of life and for the worth and dignity of all human beings.